Chris in Omaha, Nebraska, asks about the use of the adjective husky to describe the boys’ clothing section in a department store. This coded term refers to clothes made for heavier fellows. Husky was originally a positive term connoting the idea of...
Sloane, a 12-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska, is a bit anxious about starting middle school in the fall and wonders if there’s a single word that means “fear of middle school.” There are some long, rare words for the extreme fear of school in general...
Years ago, Derek from Omaha, Nebraska, adopted the greeting howdy, but his wife says it sounds too uncultured. In a 2012 paper in the Journal of English Linguistics by Lauren Hall Lew and Nola Stephens describe howdy as a term that is enregistered...
Takk for sist is a Norwegian greeting that means “thanks for the last time,” which conveys the idea that the speaker is pleased to see the person again. Another Norwegian slang phrase translates literally as “to be in the middle of the butter’s...
Rachel, who moved from Nebraska to attend school in College Park, Maryland, says her friends were surprised when she referred to the driver of an ice cream truck as the ding ding man. Indeed, this term seems to now be limited largely to Omaha...
Andrew in Omaha, Nebraska, recalls his grandfather’s use of the word george to mean exceptionally good, and double george to mean really great. Other masculine names, including Jake, Tom, and Jerry have sometimes meant something similar. In the...
